the-psoriasis-treatment

Last year I traveled to South Korea to give presentations on nonlinear structural equation modeling and WarpPLS ( ). These are an advanced statistical analysis technique and related software tool, respectively, which have been used extensively in this blog to analyze health data, notably data related to the China Study. I gave a couple of presentations at Korea University, which is in Seoul, and a keynote address at a conference in Gwangju, in the south part of the country. So I ended up seeing quite a lot of this beautiful country, and meeting many people. Some of my impressions regarding health and lifestyle issues need separate blog posts, which are forthcoming. One issue that kept me thinking, as it did when I visited Japan a few years ago as well, was the obvious leanness of the South Koreans, compared with Americans, even though you don’t see a lot of emphasis on dieting there. Interestingly, this phenomenon also poses a challenge to many dietary schools of thought. For examp

A new study linking sugar consumption with diabetes prevalence has gained significant media attention recently. The study was published in February 2013 in the journal PLoS ONE ( ). The authors are Sanjay Basu, Paula Yoffe, Nancy Hills and Robert H. Lustig. Among the claims made by the media is that “… sugar consumption — independent of obesity — is a major factor behind the recent global pandemic of type 2 diabetes” ( ). As it turns out, the effects revealed by the study seem to be very small, which may actually be a side effect of data aggregation; I will discuss this further below. Fruits are exonerated Let me start by saying that this study also included in the analysis the main natural source of sugar, fruit, as a competing variable (competing with the effects of sugar itself), and found it to be unrelated to diabetes. As the authors note: “None of the other food categories — including fiber-containing foods (pulses, nuts, vegetables, roots, tubers), fruits, meats, cereals, and